Robbie Donno is all heart when it comes to trying to help needy kids around the world get lifesaving cardiac surgery.

“It started with one beautiful child,” recalled the Long Islander, who in 1975 was president of the Manhasset Rotary Club when the volunteer group of business leaders brought 5-year-old Grace Agwaru here from Uganda to repair the hole in her heart.

In the 30 years since, the “Gift of Life” program Donno helped found has spread to Rotary clubs throughout the United States and abroad, and provided surgery for close to 7,000 children with congenital heart defects all over the globe, including Afghanistan, the West Bank, China and Colombia.

Rotarians raise funds so an ailing child and a parent can travel here. The organization pays participating hospitals $5,000 for each open-heart operation, and surgeons and other medical staff donate their skills.

“The parents that get here are desperate,” Donno said. “This is like a miracle to them because they have no hope for helping their children in their own countries either because they don’t have the money or there are not enough heart centers.”

He said volunteers and interpreters greet each child and parent in their own language when they get off the plane.

“And we become their family,” said Donno.

“When they go back home and people say ‘The Americans this or the Americans that . . . ‘ they say, ‘No, they love us.’ ”

In addition to giving kids a second chance at a healthy life, Donno’s dedication shows the world that Americans “have good hearts,” said Michael Quane, who said his longtime friend deserves a Liberty “Ambassador” medal.